Adult learning is more than alternative education, self-help, self-study, or training. Self-directed inquiry can free you from the cultural traps of today’s postmodern world. When you think for yourself, you take control of your life. Intellectual ability and critical thinking soon become substitutes for paper credentials. Simply stated aggressive learning is the most practical guide to a passionately rewarding life.

Friday, September 11, 2015

“Education is a defense
against culture,” said educator and critic Neil Postman. An education that
doesn’t result in a lifelong desire for knowledge is an education that didn’t
take. If one’s efforts cease, the battle is lost to those who use political
anxiety to manipulate vulnerable people.

Consider John, the
accountant, police officer, engineer, attorney, welder, electrician, or any other
occupation that requires learning, skill, and talent. He sailed through school
with ease, taking the hard subjects and shunning electives as a waste of time.
At work, he stands out; most everything he does is judged to be quality work.
John’s political views are fairly black and white. His worldview is heavily
influenced by his occupation and the geographic region where he lives. He has
little patience with people who do not seem to be doing what is expected of
them.

As he ages, John is
increasingly more comfortable in his work and less in his element at home. His
wife has her own career, and over time their interests grow apart, leaving them
fewer and fewer things to talk about. After a hard day’s work, John loses himself
in televised sports and watches just enough biased political reporting to have
developed a slow-burning level of contempt for all the people he believes are
ruining the world.

Simply put, John is more
of a human doing than a human being. All of his life, he has been told how to do things, mostly without asking why. He is like a satellite put into
orbit and set to spinning with such velocity that he can’t stop or spin in a
way that goes counter to his cultural indoctrination. Does this sound like anyone
you know, male or female?

Most of us grow up
constructing a worldview so heavily influenced by our geography and our social
affiliation that we believe our personal outlook constitutes straight-up reality.
Some of us are virtual prisoners of an internalized regional ideology, which
means broadly that we’re certain who the out groups are—namely, the people we
imagine are keeping us from living better lives.

The target may be immigrants,
welfare recipients, or the ethnic outgroup of the moment. The list is long, and
the irony is that many citizens allow those in power to rig the system to their
own advantage, often through the process of vicarious identification. They delude
themselves into believing that they have more in common with the very rich than
with those who are struggling to survive.

For decades I have been arguing that what citizens
need in today’s politically partisan and fast-changing world is an existential
education. By this I mean a deep level of knowledge that’s based on immersion in
the humanities and behavioral sciences. Such an education enables a person to fully
appreciate the range of differences within our species and to recognize that, as
mortal beings, we are subconsciously aware and upset that we are going to die.
It teaches us to deal with these harsh aspects of the human condition without the
need to find scapegoats to distract us from this mostly unconscious but smoldering
anxiety.

In other words, an
existential education enables a person to create one’s own meaning in life with
some genuine independence from the conformist demands of one’s culture. It also
fosters sufficient reasoning ability to dissipate the inevitable angst that
comes with being mortal.

A fundamental goal of an
existential education is the ability to burst rigid conformist worldview bubbles
and to prevent new ones from forming. The idea is to increase one’s capacity to
discern a more objective sense of reality, while remaining fully cognizant that
we are locked in an inescapable mode of subjectivity, the only solution being
nonexistence.

An existential education
should enable a person to deconstruct the collective lies and cultural myths we
grow up accepting as absolute truth and to see through the pretense of
manipulative advertising and political ploys designed to have us act against
our own interests. It teaches us to always be alert to the reality that, more
often than not, things are not as they appear and to be autonomously impervious
to the perception that human beings have value only in economic terms.

Curiosity lies at the heart
of a successful existential education by cultivating a continuous thirst for knowledge
and for a better appreciation of our subjective existence. Understanding that
we will never nail reality to the wall, we know that if we quit trying, our
perspective suffers and our anxiety festers.

Without the benefit of an
existential education, we, like John, are apt to see the world exclusively in
terms of our respective means of earning a living, and our local economic
concerns will likely trump the interests of anyone we consider outsiders. If
lumber is the primary industry, then those whose income depends on it don’t
want to hear about the need to save trees. If it’s oil, they don’t want to hear
about global warming.

If people are unfamiliar
with the divergent customs of others the world over, they are less likely to
empathize with those whose interests conflict with their own. They’ll be eager
to believe everything negative that they hear about those they consider to be
the opposition.

History makes it crystal
clear that studying the humanities won’t humanize those whose attitudes and
predispositions don’t allow it, but the inquiry most certainly helps those who
strive to be better human beings. I know this to be true, not from theory, but
from personal experience. Some people can alleviate existential angst through
religious faith, but for others, such conviction has the opposite effect and
leads to tribalism at its worst.

One thing we know for
certain is that no ethnic group, no country, no nationality, no religious
affiliation has a lock on morality and virtue. Even so, most everyone assumes their
own culture is superior to all others.

Growing up with a narrow
worldview and without the ability to expand one’s understanding is to be a
prisoner of time and place. It sets one up to be easily manipulated by those
with a political agenda, as evidenced by the current state of politics in a
country where inequality is growing fast by lobbied design.

Clinging to a constricted
or parochial worldview is a recipe for engendering the kind of contempt that
offers relief only when it’s redirected as scorn toward others. Uncertainty fosters
bigotry among ignorant people. Through collective contempt, people let their kind off the hook from bearing any
accountability for their illiteracy. To place blame is to effortlessly escape
responsibility.

When worldviews clash, an
existential education offers alternative points of view for reflection, comparisons,
other possibilities, and the knowledge that even cultures with very different
customs share fundamental values and have similar needs. A deep resource of
accumulated knowledge can diffuse pent-up anxiety by supplying something else to
consider besides the usual arbitrary accusations that come with our tribalistic
predispositions.

In a nutshell, an
existential education can help human doings become better human beings. Our
penchant for tribalism appears to be innate, and existential contempt remains
the Achilles heel of our species. This needn’t be so if we seek the knowledge and
the will to dissipate our own cultural angst.